Your Right to Know

It is
standard procedure for Republicans to repudiate President Barack Obama’s policies whenever he or a
top lieutenant visits Ohio, an election battleground state.

But the GOP’s pushback against Vice President Joe Biden’s scheduled Thursday visit to Gahanna
Lincoln High School is complicated by who he’s bringing along — U.S. Education Secretary Arne
Duncan.

Duncan is routinely praised by Republicans across the country, including Gov. John Kasich, for
sharing similar views on education reform and showing a willingness to work with the GOP to
implement change.

“Secretary Duncan believes in accountability, in measuring performance and rewarding success.
Those are values that the governor shares,” Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said yesterday.

Several Republican-led states are shifting toward policies similar to those in Obama’s Race to
the Top initiative, the Duncan-led program that favors paying teachers based on performance, judged
in large part by their students’ growth. Provisions in the state budget Kasich signed last year
related to teacher performance pay are tied to the president’s Race to the Top program.

But the Biden-Duncan event in Gahanna is not being billed as a Race to the Top discussion and
instead is intended to focus on controlling college costs. The event will be similar to a
tuition-cost-focused, town hall-style meeting they held in Florida last month.

In a phone interview with
The Dispatch yesterday, Duncan said he’ll highlight the Obama administration’s $40 billion
investment in Pell Grant awards and its move to cap some federal loan repayments, among other
items.

“I’ve had this conversation in almost every state,” Duncan said. “We get great questions from
parents, from students, and those are the kinds of conversations we need to have. The fear I have
is that more and more middle-class families are beginning to believe college is not for their
children and only for the wealthy, and that’s a huge, huge issue.”

Despite their praise for Duncan, Republicans ascribed politics rather than policy to Biden’s
Ohio trip.

“Let’s call this visit what it actually is: a campaign stop in a battleground state where Barack
Obama and Joe Biden are polling poorly at best,” Chris Maloney, spokesman for the Ohio Republican
Party, said in an email. “We welcome the president, vice president and all of their top
surrogates to Ohio, because each time they come, voters are reminded of the broken promises and
failed policies of their administration.”

In emails, the Ohio GOP and Republican National Committee say Biden’s trip has a political
purpose — he’ll also attend a private fundraiser at the Athletic Club of Columbus on Thursday
evening to raise money for Obama’s re-election campaign. Duncan is not scheduled to attend the
fundraiser.

“I try to be totally non-partisan, bipartisan, whatever the word is,” Duncan said. “I’m just not
interested in politics. I’m interested in seeing kids do better in school. Democrat or Republican
just doesn’t matter to me.”

Duncan was praised late last year at the Republican Governors Association’s annual conference in
Orlando, Fla. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said he had just stepped out to take a call from Duncan,
while Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said of the education secretary: “He’s actively engaged in trying
to solve problems.

“A lot of the things they’re doing on education are things we believe,” Haslam said. “Using data
to make decisions, tying students’ performance to a teacher’s evaluation. Using more availability
for charter schools so that parents can — even poor parents — have a choice. We believe in all
those things.”